Middle-class Catholics Shun The Democrats

December 27, 1995|By Michael Tackett, Tribune Staff Writer.

WATERBURY, Conn. — In the predawn chill of that electric November morning, with 48 hours to go in the 1960 presidential campaign, men stood in T-shirts on the Waterbury Green, warmed by the crowd of more than 30,000 people.

They awaited their hero, assembling with Catholic pride and a reinvigorated loyalty to the Democratic Party.

When John F. Kennedy's Cadillac convertible finally drove up about 3 a.m., people crushed around so hard that an insurance company would later total the vehicle because of the dents. Though the candidate was three hours late, almost no one left.

"It was Kennedy," said Edward Bergin Jr., as if the statement needed no embellishment.

Bergin, now mayor of Waterbury, was then a student at Sacred Heart High School and son of Mayor Edward Bergin Sr. He was in the lobby of the old Elton Hotel when Kennedy arrived, then rushed outside to hear Kennedy declare, "My name is Kennedy, and I have come to ask for your support." Thousands of Catholic faces, seemingly every priest and nun in the area, cheered wildly.

He started with a call for patriotism and ended with an appeal to faith. "We know there is a God, and we know He hates injustice. We see the storm coming, and we know His hand is in it. But if He has a place and a part for me, I believe that we are ready."

Seven in 10 Catholic voters cast their ballots for Kennedy that year, the high water mark for Democrats among one of the most important segments of the American electorate. But since the 1960 election, Catholics have steadily left the Democratic Party, eroding a large part of its base.

The Catholic vote is critical to Democrats because in many ways, the bloc embodies what people mean when they say middle class. One prominent adviser to President Clinton, pollster Stanley Greenberg, believes that the Catholic vote will determine the outcome of the 1996 election.

They now make up about 25 percent of the vote nationwide. But Democrats hold only a slight edge over independents and Republicans in party identification among Catholics, with roughly 27 percent of Catholics calling themselves Democrats.

In Waterbury, people like Bergin feel the national party has left them. He thinks it no longer tolerates the more conservative views that marked Kennedy's era. Then, many voters thought the two major political parties were equally conservative.

Bergin and other Catholic voters here believe their party of the working person has become the party of the "single issue or special interest." In part they speak in a code. What they mean is they see few of the Democratic programs that benefit them, with a lot of time and attention devoted to the causes of minorities, feminists and gays, at the expense of the middle class.

Republicans now have strong support here in national contests. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan beat Walter Mondale 2-1 in the congressional district that includes Waterbury, contrasting sharply with Kennedy's overwhelming victory. President George Bush beat Michael Dukakis by 18 percentage points. Ross Perot won 23 percent of the vote. Rep. Gary Franks, a two-term Republican, also won the city of Waterbury in 1994.

The party desperately needs to reconnect with voters such as those in Waterbury, who naturally once gravitated to the Democrats, but are feeling a strong pull from independents and Republicans.

"The shift of Catholics is largely the reason Democrats are not the clear majority party," Greenberg said. He said Catholics have left the party for both economic and social reasons.

"They will be the arbiter of which party represents working, middle-class life, from their work lives to their religious lives. Right now there's a lot of ambivalence on social and economic issues. They are floating (voters) and that makes them decisive."

The lament of many Catholic voters reflects the larger problem for Democrats trying to regain a national majority. They question the party's program-for-every-problem approach that seems to address every problem but theirs. They see money for mothers on welfare, but no money for the middle class such as Clinton's tax cut promised during his 1992 campaign.

And during a time of heightened economic anxiety, they are resentful of what they see as abuse of welfare and other social programs and a party orthodoxy that excludes conservative views.

Bergin charts the change in the party from the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

"The change in the party really came in Chicago at the convention when it was opened up to the ultraliberals," he said. "Then in 1972, the quote `professional politicians' unquote were shelved. . . . They became the party of special interest groups and a quota system. But the Democratic Party of Waterbury and the Naugatuck Valley is the last bastion of the conservative part of the party."